Drummer @ Liquidation of HeathCo

On my brief vacation this week I had the immense pleasure of visiting Salisbury, which despite its many chavs is nonetheless extremely cool.

Time does change things, however. My reaction on seeing Stonehenge 1997: "Woooow. An amazing monument to the ancient intelligence of the human race and possible outside influences." My reaction on seeing Stonehenge 2007: "Jesus. Can someone get these crappy rocks out of my way?" This probably relates, as I've said in posts passim, to my anger and, indeed, humiliation at seeing things I previously believed in or even worshipped turn out to be nothing, faked, or just there, with no deep background to them at all.

Salisbury Cathedral on the other hand is magnificent. It isn't a bizarre spiritual experience, like Chartres; it's not a powerful political moment like Rheims; and it ain't a great omnihistorical object like Rouen. But what it is is perfect. You can see the mathematics pouring off it. You can feel the little gags, the in-jokes, the cheeky repetitions soaking into the transepts and the buttresses. Instead of imposing and awe-inspiring as the naves of Amiens and Beauvais (before it collapsed, presumably) aim for, Salisbury is peacefully, lightly, beautiful with its slender columns of Purbeck Marble and its complete architectural coherence (alright, except for the utterly, supermodel stunning spire). Built in a scant 30 odd years, like the drummer, it exudes the confidence of its designers, the faith of its designers, and the fullness of its designers' worldview. Unlike the drummer. The completeness of Salisbury is unusual among gothic Cathedrals (Canterbury was something like 500 years in the building, demolition and re-building) and it gives it those spendid, dancing lines across the entire length of the nave and chancel (often gothic cathedrals are, say, - mid-gothic nave, late gothic chancel, norman transepts or something like that).

It won't blow your mind, but does perfection ever? You just think that it's right, really right (or I do anyway).

Anyhoo. The tombstone of the late Sir Edward Heath sits near the altar. I'm sorry to say that my first thought on seeing it was "Wot, no effigy?" but at least the stone reads "Statesman, Musician & Scholar". There is nothing else. I expected an exhibition, as I haven't visited since Heath was living, but no. I thought his house might have become the museum he desired, but apart from the departure of the men with machine guns, there is nothing there. I felt very sad looking at it. I recalled his stubborn bulk, his half-arsed fight to save the desperate Britain of the early 70s, and suddenly felt a great, insignificant, lightness that this figure of our troubled living past was stuffed under a stone here. Perhaps it gives him his best chance of historical survival, or maybe that's what he thought - but already you can feel that no-one remembers, no-one cares. Our recent history is our worst recalled, our least cared about. How much had he worked to create, how little he did create, and how little anyone really gives a toss a mere 30 years later - it nearly, but not quite, brought a tear to my eye among the tombstones of minor aristocrats and the Tory historian Arthur Bryant, whom the drummer-dad loves.

The title of this post refers to Private Eye's spoofing of Heath as the CEO of HeathCo (like the Dear Bill letters, or the parish newsletters from the vicar of St Albion's). It sounds good in retrospect, to paint him as the super-professional, ambitious but slightly unscrupulous head of a going-places company: but he wasn't, and it didn't. It must have seemed like a crap joke at the time, which is presumably why people often talk about the Dear Bill letters, but no-one gives a monkey's about HeathCo.

HeathCo was crap anyway. The lights kept going out.